Tournament SS CAP Snake Draft Discussion Thread

girlfriend drafted R2

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What is gonna be the highlight of this tour? People that would get picked within the first two rounds getting banned for antisemitism? Airwind and his girlfriend? Or maybe the Miasmaws discord server getting raided with people spamming the n word?

the actual answer is in the following spoiler

It's actually LucarioOfLegends refusing to give Jordy xavgb in exchange for Jordy's entire roster.
TRADE RIGHT NOW!!!
 
Alright lets do some power rankings!


:ss/smokomodo: Sizzling Smokomodos :ss/smokomodo:

A pretty convincing 1st in my eyes judging off the talent drafted here, Jordy is the best SM player in the pool and provides stellar teambuilding support for fantastic pilots such as PDT, Splash, and Maki, who are all extremely experienced tour players who with good building support, I expect to farm the vast majority of players. We've seen how good PDT with building support is in CAPPL and we've seen how good he is at learning metagames with him reaching finals of Grand Slam this year too. I expect this teams players to just outclass the competition.

:ss/equilibra: Eternal Equilibras :ss/equilibra:
SHSP has drafted a really solid team with a good mix of CAP mains for support and good Pilots. Averado, Estarossa, and TNM are all good players and supported by SHSP and Quziel in the builder will likely perform very well. The other slots are where I can see this team struggling as Felucia did not have the best CAPPL this year and the other names are not standing out to me as players that can take games off of the better players from other teams. Overall I expect this team to do really solidly.


:ss/pyroak: Red Hot Pyroaks :ss/pyroak:
This team has Stresh so it gets at least 1 guaranteed win every round. Its rounded out with some OK support with the likes of Snake Rattler and GardeLame but doesn't have too much else going for it. Some CAP players here to help with the meta understanding like Wulf and SUN but this team doesnt really have the non-CAP playing pilots where this is more advantageous as Stresh is familiar with CAP as a whole already. If the Pyroaks do well it will likely be off a big carry performance from Stresh.

:ss/brattler: Snake Brattlers :ss/brattler:
Brattler's have a decent comp here that has the potential to be 3rd off the back of players like againa and velvet. Heaven Jay is also pretty decent support for the non-CAP players such as ojr and velvet who are otherwise good pilots. Voltage, tj, and not a racist can all do fine into the majority of players in this tour as well, I just don't see them stacking up well vs the teams above them here. A difficult team to place as I think they could reasonably be put 3rd too.

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Malicious Miasmaws
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This team has a few decent players in Lasen, Spoo, and Rabia who all have decent CAP experience, even if Rabia's was only this past CAPPL. The team likely has enough building and playing experience in CAP to pick up some wins but I see them struggling with a roster focused on decent SM players in an SM pool as strong as this one. Lasen is easily the standout player on this roster and will need to perform big for the Maw's to place well this tour.

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Astrolotl Estrellados
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This roster is really underwhelming compared to the others with very little building support and a lot of mediocre pilots. The ones to watch to pull upsets for this team are ADF Test, D2TheW, and SputnikGT, but it would be very unrealistic to place this team anywhere other than dead last unfortunately. They will need to overperform massively to take weeks off of any other team
 
As promised my PR- I’m not including my Libras because bias so it’ll be 1-5 (but let it be known we’re first lets go Libras)

Smokos: Smokos come in at #1 for me for much the same reasons as Jho has them there: this team has a hell of a lot of power behind it. Jordy himself, PDT, the list goes on, and the building is likely to be extremely solid especially in the SM slots. There’s enough experience with CAP in a solid number of the members here as well, so I can see the team being up to speed in SWSH quickly as well.

Brattlers: Brattlers come in over Roaks here for me off of my thoughts that they have a higher floor. I’m excited to see what this team cooks up especially in SWSH, with creative builders in Jay and Againa. I also think highly of Voltage as a manager though I do not envy his position of deciding who plays what meta- at my first glance it appears to be a tricky decision that could spread the teams strengths thin.

Roaks- I think the Roaks have a high ceiling but a low floor in this tournament. I think Stresh is phenomenal, and there’s good support for him here, but there’s also a lot of “ifs.” If Snake is able to bounce back from recent individual/team tour performances, if the team’s builder is well stocked, and so on with a number of other questions, this team can challenge.

Miasmaws: This is a hard team to evaluate, and I can reasonably see them above either Roaks or Brattlers depending on how the season plays out. The team has firepower in players like Reach, Lasen and Rabia, but I think a lot hinges on the ability for some of the names I don’t know as well such as Darek, Snafu and Bad RNG to take a big step up in a team tour format.

Lotls: This team is a gamble. Airwind assembled a team that I think can be best described as CAP PS room tour mainstays and supported them with some more established players to lead. I find it hard to put this team above any other, but I am expecting a very unique perspective from them and can see that giving them big upset potential this season.
 
Things to look for in this Snake Draft:

Flying type usage and team composition

Tomohawk vs Landorus-T is the traditional "one of" question for CAP team building, but Mandibuzz has complicated this since Gen 8 began, Moltres and Zapdos are extremely useful new additions, and Heavy Duty Boots have made it much more plausible to carry multiple Flying types of one team. The return of Clefable also makes Urshifu a bit more manageable, so the pressure is less intense to always have Tomohawk.

Deciphering the pool of Steels

Similarly to Flying types, the metagame is glutted with quality Steels right now and it's hard to carry more than two--how will usage be balanced between Equilibra, Magearna, Melmetal, Heatran, Ferrothorn and more? What will this mean for traditional powerhouses like Tapu Lele?

Miasmaw

The newest CAP is really good at disrupting the Slowking/bro + breaker formula that can be very dominant in this metagame. That said, it really struggles against Clefable, Fini and to a lesser extent Bulu/Jumbao, especially using the common Choice Band set. It should be interesting to see how much usage this gets, and in what team configurations.
 
Since Im not playing in this draft Im free to help with team building, and post my terrible takes on teams.
Though Jho has beaten me to overall team ranks, Im still going to post mine anyway.
Warning: This is my opinion and my takes are likely going to suck ass. + this list is half which team is overall the best and half which team I'm the most interested in.

#1 Malicious Miasmaw
I had an idea for a team name called Malicious Molluxes. So excellent team name G-Luke (even if you stole the name from me...)
This team looks stacked full of strong players. Reach is a teambuilding beast and one of the best CAP players.
Derek has shown in daily toruneys to be great and currently has the ^ rank. Lasen, Snaft, Spoopy, and Birkal are players Im very familiar with and are pretty experienced with CAP while offering solid teams ideas allowing the team to bounce ideas off of each other.
I expect Snaft to stall out a game or 2.

#2 Astrolotl Estrel
Huge Congrats to ex privatyke Airwind for becoming a manager. Very active player who is very experienced with Gen 8 and was a high level Gen 7 CAP player. Lineup is basically a bunch of daily tour regulars, and some other players Im aware of. Pitmore, D2TW (aka Reach's son), and SputnikGT are some names Im very familar with think they are all very good players. D2TW has beaten Reach and Pitmore thinks a lot like me.
They are not the 2nd best team, but the most interesting lineup. Regardless of how they do overall, this is a team to keep an eye on.
This placing is mostly because I really want to see how this will play out and supporting Airwind as a manager.
Be prepared to google translate this team hard in case they start speaking Spanish.

#3 Eternal Equlibras
Im sorry my general Felucia, but your here (though I will still root for you in whatever game you play).
Felucia is best CAP player who can make the impossible happen. And Quiz is one of the best skilled players, understands the meta like no one else and is a beast of a team builder. The Number Man has been doing awesome in the Playtest Tourney. But Im not to familiar with the rest of the lineup to give a solid call.

#4 Snake Brattlers
Voltage is one of the best team managers so this team is going to run super smooth.
Jay is a beast of a player and Againa is also great. But un familiar with rest of team to give a solid call.

#5 Red Hot Pyroak
A lot of this teams strengths comes from Snakes ability to play and build teams. But a teams reliance on 1 player being consistent is never a good thing. But the team has wulf who is a great player and builder and SUN who I just played today. So there is more to this team than just Snake.

#6 Sizziling Smokomodos
Im aware Jordy is likely the best SM CAP player and Zeph with mad lad predictions but other than that, I don't see this team having the same oomph as some of the other teams heavy hitters. I think Jordy isn't that familiar with post DLC CAP metagame due to focusing on Nat Dex.
Just like Pyoraks team, a lot of the strength comes from 1 main man (Jordy) to pull weight, but since I think Snake overall is > Jordy, so Pyorak > Smokomodos.
 
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OMG this is amazing.
Ty so much SHSP and Rabia for documenting this.
Based on the stats presented here are some trends I picked up.

Clef, Tomo, and Astro are top 3 in usage stats. Not to surprising to see these 3 being super popular due to being easy to splash on teams and being really good at what they do.
Dont know what kind of usage stats indicates over centralization (I usually go with Pdon stats of => 60% give or take) but seeing the highest in the 40s indicates to me that there isn't an overcentralzing Pokemon in the pre phero ban format (which is saying something given that Phero got banned).
With Phero banned, I expect defensive teams like fat balance, semi stall, and full stall to be more viable.
And as the weeks go on, there will be more data for me to make these kind of trends posts in the meta.

Which I love doing, tourney data is CAPs main Form of data gathering on the state of the format. Because ladder data is flawed af.

snake edit: moved this post from replays / stats thread
 
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woo !!! pyroaks stay on top :D we shall triumph again next snake wowooo

that being said i realize i never made a reflections post but better late than never. it was a serious pleasure to play on the team and get to know my fellow cappers.. as a first impression to cap i couldnt have asked for anything better and i srsly cant wait for next snake now that i have approved reasonably since this tour!! big shout outs to wulf stresh lucariooflegends sunmyser and snake
 
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